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Parish Brewing is well around south Louisiana known for their Ghost in the Machine double IPA and Canebrake wheat ale. One thing they don’t have as a regular offering is a stout. While that’s not bound to change anytime soon, Parish does have a limited release stout available in their taproom right now. Neapolitan Stout is exactly what you think it is: a stout with chocolate (cocoa), vanilla (beans) and strawberries added to make it the ice cream of beers.

Thanks to the kindness of a neighbor who was at the brewery last week, I was able to get a crowler (yes, Parish now has crowlers available in their taproom) of Neapolitan Stout delivered to me. I cracked this one open over the weekend to celebrate LSU’s thrashing of Auburn Saturday. In a word, this beer kicks ass. It pours jet black, and reminds me of motor oil being poured from a can of this size. There is a beautiful tan head on it, and the crowler keeps the carbonation really well. The chocolate and vanilla notes are immediately apparent on the nose. This is not a roasty stout, but a smooth and velvety one, which suits me just fine. The strawberry notes come through as a subtle fruitiness on the back end, but the chocolate and vanilla combine to really make this a tasty brew. I hesitate to call this a dessert beer, as most of the time I consider those to be (overly) sweet, but this one worked well as an ice cream substitute. I can only imagine how good this would be actually poured over ice cream. But I wasn’t going to waste the little bit I had of it. Besides, I have no Blue Bell still, so ice cream doesn’t exist in my world at the moment.

Parish’s founder and brewmaster, Andrew Godley, tells me that this beer should be bottled next week once labels arrive, and will be sold almost exclusively from the taproom. Unfortunately for us, this is likely just a one off beer, since he can barely keep up with Canebrake as it is, and we are all jonesing for more Ghost in the machine. But I’d really love to see this one brewed on a semi-regular basis alongside Dr. Hoptagon and Farmhouse IPA. Maybe if we all ask him nicely, he’ll consider it.

In the meantime, grab a crowler directly from the brewery or stay tuned on more details of the bottle release. I’ll update this post as I know more.